For years we’ve been told that prevention is the best and only method for decreasing CO2 emissions and fighting climate change. On a personal level, activists urged us to eat less meat, drive our cars less often and recycle. More broadly speaking, we asked our governments to support clean energy and find alternatives to the oil industry. But now researchers are fighting against climate change from a new front. Instead of just decreasing the emissions we are putting into the air, science is now working to pull already emitted carbon back out of the air.

Details on the Carbon Capture Plant

In Zurich, Switzerland a newly operational carbon capture plant has become the first commercial venture to suck CO2 emissions out of the air. The plant is comprised of three shipping containers that hold six CO2 collectors. The collectors are products of Climeworks, a clean energy start up.

So how does it work? Each collector has a small fan that pulls air into it where a filter soaks up the carbon dioxide. To fully saturate a filter, the fan has to be pulling in air for two to three hours. Once the filter is full, the box closes and the collector is heated to 213 degrees Fahrenheit. This releases the CO2 in a pure form so that it can be sold, repurposed into other products or buried underground.

The cofounder and director of Climework, Jan Wurzbacher, explains, “You can do this over and over again. It’s a cyclic process. You saturate with CO2, then you regenerate, saturate, regenerate. You have multiple of these units, and not all of them go in parallel. Some are taking in CO2, some are releasing CO2. That means that overall the plant has continuous CO2 production.”

Where Does the CO2 Go?

At the Zurich plant, the CO2 pulled in by the collectors is being used by a neighboring greenhouse. The greenhouse capitalizes on carbon dioxide for increased growth in its tomato and cucumber plants.

Climeworks is also in talks with beverage companies that use CO2 for sparkling water or soda. It would be advantageous for large beverage companies to institute a carbon capture plant on site to cut down on shipping costs of bringing in CO2.

Why Do We Need a Carbon Capture Plant?

Unfortunately, research tells us that we are unlikely to meet the climate change limits set out by the Paris Climate Change Agreement based on conservation alone. We are too close to the deadline and too far behind our goal to make it attainable. So that’s where carbon capture comes in.

Chris Field, the director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, explains further, “We really only have less than 20 years left at current emission rates to have a good chance of limiting emissions to less than 2°C. So it’s a big challenge to do it simply by decreasing emissions from energy, transportation, and agriculture.”

What Does the Future Hold for Carbon Capture Projects?

At its current plant, Climeworks is selling off the CO2 with the understanding that it will eventually end up back in the atmosphere. However, they do have plans to use the CO2 in the future to create carbon-neutral products. By using renewable energy, they may be able to create plastics or cleaner fuel.

The ultimate goal for the carbon capture plant is to remove CO2 from the air and store it underground so it doesn’t have the ability to continue polluting our air. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that we will need to remove 10 billion tons of CO2 a year from our atmosphere by 2050. Climeworks understands that to meet this goal by 2050, we need to start today.

Climeworks plans to begin selling their products first to large multi-national corporations that want to meet ambitious climate goals. Negative emissions with the carbon capture plant are the next step for companies already utilizing renewable energy, increased efficiency and green materials/transportation.

The current plant in Switzerland can capture 900 tons of CO2 per year, which is about he same as the emissions from 200 cars. In order to capture 1% of global emissions, Climeworks would need to have 750,000 plants up and running. Climeworks believes this is possible. But they’ll need other carbon capture companies to get on board if we want to remove the 10 billion tons of emissions annually by 2050.